Ovenman

This debut novel follows When Thinfinger--skateboarder, kitchen worker extraordinaire, and ne'er-do-well with a slightly tarnished heart of gold--and the trail of Post-It notes he relies on to make sense of his world. When a robbery occurs at his beloved pizza parlor, things begin to heat up for Ovenman.

Skateboarder, restaurant worker, and punk rocker wannabe, the antihero of Jeff Parker’s uproariously funny debut novel adds a new twist to the classic coming-of-age story. Our hero, When Thinfinger, is a ne’er-do-well with a slightly tarnished heart of gold, and relies on Post-it notes to help him make sense of the chaos and momentum of his life: a girlfriend who dreams he murders her, a long lost Biodad who writes letters filled with lies, a televised war that is over before it has even begun, and a robbery he can’t remember committing.Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman and the collection The Back of the Line and the coeditor of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. He served as the program director of Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is currently the acting director of the Master’s Program in the Field of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.

Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collections Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and The Fun Parts and three novels: The Ask, The Subject Steve, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.